Joost de Valk
joost.blog · Personal blog · on HN since 2019
Joost de Valk, creator of the Yoast SEO plugin, writes about WordPress, CMS market share and open web governance.
What HN saysHN links it in WordPress governance disputes, where commenters debate whether he and others banned by Mullenweg were starting a fork, and for market share data.
19HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
21stories submitted
513story points
3 months agolast shared
2019people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Breaking the Status Quo8 people · 21 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 2WordPress Market Share Update: 33%2 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 3Do You Need a CMS?2 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 4CMS Market Share Analysis2 people · 1 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 5WordPress’ market share is shrinking1 people · 262 points · first shared 2022 · 224 comments on HN
- 6The FAIR Package Manager: Decentralized WordPress infrastructure1 people · 210 points · first shared 2025 · 44 comments on HN
- 7Transparency, Contribution, and the Future of WordPress1 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 8Fair, WordPress, and Knowing When to Stop1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 9Block the Abuse, Not the Future1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 10WordPress needs to refactor, not redecorate1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 11Astro SEO Guide – From Yoast SEO Founder1 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 12How I made my skills update themselves1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 13The Future of the Website1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 14How to create a healthy GitHub repository1 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
GavinAnderegg · 2025-01-22
For context, Joost de Valk is the original creator of Yoast SEO — an extremely popular SEO plugin for WordPress. He's also one of the people Matt Mullenweg banned from WordPress.org on January 11th for "starting a fork" (which wasn't something that was currently happening) [0]. Post Status is a WordPress business community which de Valk just acquired, and is going to be turning into a non-profit with an advisory board. These actions match some of the thinking de Valk wrote about in December. [1]
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/11/matt-mullenweg-deactivates-wordpress…
[1]: https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/
keikobadthebad · 2025-01-12
> None of the banned people mentioned a fork
Steady on, at least one of them wrote a big blog post on his own site Dec 20 basically prematurely accepting the honour.
https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/
I can imagine the excessive smugness there about 'taking back the commons' triggered the purge.
pabloh03 · 2024-10-04
Thanks this is helpful, and your response tells me a lot of why some people don't want to use it anymore. It's still massive though https://joost.blog/cms-market-share/
mthoms · 2025-01-12
They never claimed to be starting a fork (at least not yet)[0]. They only called for reform to the existing governance structures.[1]
Matt Mullenweg painted it as a fork to suit his narrative and pre-emptively poison the well (by implying they are incompetent) of a potential future fork.[2]
He's done that a couple times now. He claims to support forks and says "I'll even promote them on WordPress.org" (paraphrase) but what he does is post before a fork is even ready or properly organized. Thereby sabotaging the effort and making everyone involved look bad. [3]
It's truly evil.
[0] https://x.com/jdevalk/status/1878210129914409063
[1] https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/
[2] https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/
[3] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/
EDIT: Matt just posted another childish taunt in response to Joost's clarification. See https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815